


Oh, Forget About the Sun (He's Forgotten Us By Now)

by synchronicities



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergent Past Season 5, F/M, Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, Healing, Nature, Peace, just...so much fluff, uhh...blarke GARDENING? and in FLOWER CROWNS? ?? wtf more could u want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 03:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16568675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synchronicities/pseuds/synchronicities
Summary: “We can rebuild,” Monty had said, kind and soft in the way she had missed. “We can make it better.”Indra had closed her eyes, and Kane had bowed his head in gratitude. Clarke had cried a little. She thinks that Bellamy, next to her, did too.--Canon-divergent past 5x12. Eden is growing, and as they settle into peacetime, Bellamy and Clarke find quiet in nature.





	Oh, Forget About the Sun (He's Forgotten Us By Now)

**Author's Note:**

> The saddest t100 death ever is Earth itself, because postapocalyptic settings where Earth softly and slowly recovers and reclaims civilization (think _Breath of the Wild_ ) is one of my FAVORITE things and I will always be lowkey bitter the 100 decided to keep being a War and Space Show instead of giving this to us. So YEAH, McCreary’s face gets beaten in earlier, they never leave Earth, all the conversations that need to happen are done, and complications like echo and Octavia….idk them, just wanted to write fic about the planet recovering and Bell and Clarke flirting!!! With NATURE.
> 
> RIP earth, u deserved better
> 
> Title [ from ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiX2UCGhw2c) Gregory Ian Isakov.

It’s a few months after the battle when Monty reports it. They have a rudimentary council again, and inasmuch as Wonkru and Eligius are at each other’s throats, there is an understanding that they came very close to ruining it all, and from there, they manage to build a tentative peace.

With peace comes tedious council meetings. Clarke had wanted nothing to do with them, but she’d been badgered into joining the council at Monty’s request, as she is the foremost expert on Eden. Clarke still finds it difficult to deny him, but when he clears his throat at the tail end of a particularly long session, she wants to murder him.

“No,” he says, giving her a soft smile. “It’s good news.”

So he tells them. “Eden is growing.”

He’d given them more science to back it up – the ecological succession at the fringes of the valley, the ruined buildings covered in moss, the grasses and weeds transforming the soil into something arable and healthy. They wouldn’t see the endless forests beyond the valley again in their lifetime, nor their children’s, but…

“We have the Shallow Valley, and we can rebuild,” Monty had said, kind and soft in the way she had missed. “We can make it better.”

Indra had closed her eyes, and Kane had bowed his head in gratitude. Clarke had cried a little. She thinks that Bellamy, next to her, did too.

* * *

She starts a garden.

It’s an idea that’s slow to come to fruition, but she likes it – the gentle push of her hands over the seeds, the regular watering, the joy of those first sprouts, and the quiet, homey feeling of seeing the blooms. It soothes her – life begetting life, the placating feeling of finally being responsible for growth and change on this godforsaken planet.

Unlike most things in and around their cabin the garden is mostly her responsibility. Madi has never taken to it, but she likes to help sometimes, weeding, watering, and harvesting the plants when Clarke asks her to. Monty comes over sometimes to help, and Raven, who has never taken to botany nor agriculture, will occasionally pop by to watch and talk with both of them. These conversations are light, never the deep topics they would have once shared, but it’s a start, and Clarke is grateful.

It feels like peace. Like home.

Sometimes Bellamy gives her seeds or fruits or cuttings of plants he finds on scouting expeditions, and she always accepts them with a smile that comes easier, now. They’re always planted by the next day.

Sometimes she makes dinner entirely out of homegrown produce, and it’s not _quite_ delicious but she brings them over to his cabin whenever she makes too much. He always smiles and tells her they’re good, and these dinners nearly always result in them stretched out by the fire, bellies full and hearts warm, talking in low voices until one of them drifts off to sleep.

* * *

 Madi takes to him.

She had thought, even hoped it would happen, but the degree to which it happens surprises her. The Flame has made Madi quiet, serious, and far too wise beyond her years, but Clarke knows her daughter, and can tell that the admiration in Madi’s gaze, the exuberance with which she follows him around camp, and the delighted but restrained way she beams up at him whenever he offers advice at council meetings is all her. Bellamy, for his part, takes her adoration in stride, although Clarke can’t help but wonder if he looks at Madi with regret and sees Octavia, young and bright-eyed.

One day she finds herself in conversation with Diyoza about hospice shift schedules and fall creeping up on them, and Diyoza hands her the baby to stretch her arms. Clarke internally panics as she takes little Hope, who’s at the age where all she wants to do is fuss and cry, but the experience that came with her informal training up in the Ark takes over. It makes her smile a little, watching the baby – a century and a half, and Clarke Griffin can still hold a child.

Maybe everyone else can, too. Soon.

“My arms hurt like a bitch all the time,” Diyoza complains, stretching them out. “No fucking clue how you managed to raise a baby during the damn apocalypse, I have a hard time of it _now_.”

Clarke takes a second to parse her meaning, and embarrassment floods her when she realizes she’s talking about Madi. “Oh,” she corrects kindly, adjusting Hope, who’s calmed down. “Madi’s not…biologically mine. I adopted her after the death wave.”

Diyoza arches one eyebrow in a way that somehow manages to be intimidating. “Is that so,” she says. If she’s joking, Clarke doesn’t know. “You and Blake sure fooled me.”

Clarke wants to say a great many things – that she and Bellamy had never been emotionally ready enough for that, that he’d just broken up with his girlfriend a couple of months ago, that he does love her, but not in the way she’s accepted that she cares for him. But all of these do nothing to dispel the image of Bellamy passing by her cabin to give her some new seed or cutting, a tender smile on his face, and so she doesn’t say anything at all.

* * *

There are thick vines growing over the stones of some of the cottages. Some people don’t like them and painstakingly have them removed before bringing them over to the communal composting, preferring the appearance of clean stone. Clarke secretly loves the ones that grow over hers, though, thick and green as they are. She thinks that after the hell the planet’s been through, the plants can grow wherever they want.

“Wherever the hell they want, huh,” Bellamy chuckles lowly when she tells him this one day, when they’re walking back from the council meeting hall. “Probably have lots of bugs. A whole ecosystem, right there on your walls.”

“They’ll wither up and die soon,” Clarke scoffs. “It’s getting cooler.” It’s the truth – the leaves are turning bright orange and yellow and are beginning to litter the streets of the village as the temperature drops and trees become barer and barer.

“Pessimistic.”

“Optimistic,” she corrects, nudging him. “Means the planet’s getting better.”

He opens his mouth to say something, but at that moment, the cloudy sky makes good on its promise and unleashes a crack of thunder. Clarke and Bellamy barely have time to duck under a roof before the torrential autumn downpour hits.

“It’s raining,” Clarke laughs, a little hysterical.

Beside her, Bellamy wipes his face down, water dripping down the lines of his face and into his shirt, and Clarke has to look away from him. He smirks, and for a moment he is replaced with the younger firebrand she had known in her youth. “You know what we could do?” he says, eyes dancing, and her heart swells. She loves him as he is now, gruff and composed, but sometimes traces of the impulsive, rebellious young man she had clung to peek through, and her heart warms.

“What?”

“We could run to your cabin from here. It’s just across the square.”

She snorts. “We’ll get sick, and then I’m sure everything will go to shit. Whatever happened to using your head?”

He shrugs one shoulder lazily. “You’ll forgive me,” he teases, at once both New Bellamy and Old Bellamy, and it’s dizzyingly true. They had had to forgive each other a lot over the last year. This is nothing. This could even be _fun_.

Bellamy takes her hand in his and bolts through the rain. Clarke shrieks, the water is freezing, and Bellamy tucks her under his arm and pulls her so closely she can feel the rumble of his laughter through her clothes. They make it to her cabin hair soaked through and teeth chattering, and Madi looks decidedly unimpressed from where she’s stoking the fire.

They both come down with colds the next day and Madi glares at them from across the clinic, but it’s worth it.

* * *

Winter comes, and with it, wariness. Wonkru had come out of a climate-controlled bunker, but while the Arkers appreciate the sentimentality associated with Christmas even as the religious aspects had been lost long ago, the Grounders are more distrustful, seeing it as a barren period of cold and death. Clarke understands the sentiment – after so long, she’ll take life when she sees it.

Nevertheless, Monty and Harper, perhaps spurred by the success of their recent agricultural endeavors, their own comparative lack of experience with the seasons (as the Ark had gone down and back up so quickly) and the spate of holiday movies available on the Ring, talk the council into sort of celebration. They agree to a feast on their estimate of the winter solstice, and a large, respectable pine is brought in to the village center. The younger members of their little society take charge of decorations – people bring in mismatched metal baubles and scraps of cloth to hang around its branches. Raven caves and has Bellamy hoist a chain of solar-paneled lights around the tree. It looks hilarious, nothing like the picturesque trees their ancestors had, but they love it all the same.

“We can spare one lousy tree,” Monty had said when Clarke had asked him, his cheeks reddening in the cold air. “The valley’s getting better. We can be happy.”

The tradition of holiday gift-giving has apparently survived two apocalypses, however, and it’s in full force at the feast itself. Zeke gives Raven a necklace with a pretty metallic-looking stone on it; Kane had restocked herbs for Abby over autumn; even Murphy gets a new set of gloves from Emori. Clarke makes a fur scarf for Madi, a warmer-lined wrap for Diyoza and Hope, who is almost at the age where she’s too big to be carried around, a thin dress for her mother that she can wear in the springtime, and barters for a pair of socks for Bellamy. She’s looking around for him and Madi when something cold and sharp pelts her in the back.

“Hey, Clarke!” Madi calls, giggling. Bellamy’s standing next to her, arms crossed, a grin on his face. “Snowball fight!”

“Oh, don’t try me,” Clarke shoots back. “Harper, Murphy, get over here. You’re with me.”

Later, they all end up laying in the snow, sweaty, laughing, and exhausted, having roped most of the others into joining them. Nobody had kept track of who was really winning and so they all just kind of lay there, talking in hushed whispers to each other and occasionally laughing out loud and insulting somebody else without getting up.

Unsurprisingly, Bellamy inches over to Clarke so that they’re lying in the snow side by side, looking up at the clear winter sky. “To think just months ago you were up there,” Clarke whispers, more to the stars than to him.

Bellamy makes a noise, and she knows what he’s thinking – guilt that he hadn’t come down sooner, sorrow that he had mourned her and kept her waiting. They had talked about it after the battle, hashed it out and forgiven each other as best as they could, and left the rest to time. So she doesn’t bring it up, not when it’s the winter solstice and everyone’s trying their best to be happy, and instead slides her gloved hand into his in the small space between them. She feels his shoulder tense before it relaxes, and he squeezes her hand instead. Clarke looks over at him, flakes in his hair and cheeks flushed from the cold, and lets herself imagine the possibility.

“To another year on the ground,” Raven suddenly calls from somewhere to Clarke’s right, and she receives a chorus of cheers in return.

* * *

Springtime, and the buds of flowers once again burst through damp soil, there is faint birdsong in the air, and the trees begin to green. Clarke once again spends mornings tending the garden, planting and watering and tilling the soil. It’s larger than it was last year; she’s added space for some of the new seeds they had discovered or synthesized in the meantime, as well as some other ornamentals. Her friends still come around to help. Raven now comes more often and voluntarily; Murphy is supposedly unwilling, but Clarke knows he too finds quiet and purpose in the tending of life. Monty has less time to spend with her now that Harper is pregnant, so Clarke visits them instead, happy to play nurse as her friend grows and glows.

With springtime also comes her birthday. She and Madi had never celebrated birthdays when it was just the two of them and she refuses to make a big deal of it now. Madi sighs and concedes, but they compromise on lunching with Abby and Kane while Madi wheedles her into accepting the bracelet they had commissioned a Wonkru blacksmith to make for her. Madi also tells everyone else at dinner, and they react with indignation that Clarke hadn’t told them and insist on singing a raucous rendition of _Happy Birthday_ so loudly that Clarke laughs until she cries.

Later, Bellamy finds her.

“I just realized I didn’t know when your birthday was,” he says, looking abashed. “Not until Madi told me it was today. So I got you…plants. Happy birthday.” She realizes he’s holding a mangled mix of flowers, wild roses, tulips, lavender, and baby’s breath all drooping together in his hand, but it’s the most beautiful bouquet she’s ever seen.

“Bellamy,” she says, fond. “You give me plants all the time.”

He smiles, ducking his head. “Not flowers.”

She wills her hands to stop trembling and gingerly takes the bouquet from him. “No,” she murmurs, before leaning up to kiss him on the cheek. “Not flowers.”

* * *

There is a clearing by the river that Clarke and Madi had liked to frequent before everybody had burst back into Clarke’s life. In the summer she takes Bellamy there, holding his hand and ambling through the woods at the river’s lazy, meandering pace, a slowness life had never afforded them in their youth.

Bellamy’s mouth falls open when they get there, and Clarke feels a bit giddy. The field of wildflowers, flanked by the crumbling pillars of some old building, has been her and Madi’s precious secret for months. When Clarke had tentatively broached the topic bringing Bellamy, Madi had just rolled her eyes and asked why she hadn’t done it yet.

Clarke doesn’t have an answer for that, but she figures she’s been wanting to share everything with Bellamy for a while now, anyway.

“I like to come here to hear myself think,” she blurts out, stumbling over some of the words in an attempt to fill the silence. “It’s just far enough from everything else that I don’t miss out, but I know I’ll be alone, and…”

His hands find and clasp hers. “It’s beautiful,” he murmurs, as if speaking too loud will ruin it.

They’d planned to make a day of it, and so they have a blanket spread out by the water, underneath a shady tree that speckles sunlight across Bellamy’s face, as well as a fairly well-stocked picnic basket. Clarke picks wildflowers and weaves them into crowns the way Madi had taught her how; Bellamy lies with his head in her lap and reads a musty old paperback he picked up in one of the houses. "I like this one," he says softly, thumbing one of the pages before reading one of the poems in it aloud. " _And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn / w_ _ould scarcely know that we were gone._ "

"It's lovely," Clarke says, and he hums as she runs her fingers gently through his scalp. She loves him like this, peaceful and relaxed in a way he never is at the village, and wishes she could immortalize the image of Bellamy Blake lying in a field of flowers, sunlight dancing across his freckles. Instead she hums old Ark melodies and puts one of the crowns on his head. A few of the petals get in his nose, and she laughs when he sneezes. “You’ll mess it up!”

“You should make one for yourself, too, princess,” he teases, putting his book down and reaching up to tug the ends of her hair. It’s longer now, perhaps near the length it was when they had first met all those years ago.

It’s been so long, and Bellamy still looks at her like _that_. The two of them – they had wasted so much time.

“If you insist.” Clarke sighs in mock suffering, fingers deftly twisting the flower stems together until she has a circle to match his.

Bellamy sits up, adjusts his lopsided flower crown, takes the one she had just made, and places it atop her head. “There,” he says, very softly. “Now we match.”

She looks up at him. His face is very close to hers, and for the first time in a very long time, she lets herself think he might kiss her, or she might kiss him. “Yeah,” she whispers, the smile blooming on her face matching the one on his. “We do.”

* * *

 

 _There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,_  
_And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;_

 _And frogs in the pools singing at night,_  
_And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;_

 _Robins will wear their feathery fire_  
_Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;_

 _And not one will know of the war, not one_  
_Will care at last when it is done._

 _Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree_  
_If mankind perished utterly;_

 _And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,_  
_Would scarcely know that we were gone._

 _\--_ "There Will Come Soft Rains", Sara Teasdale

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> comment!!! leave kudos!!!!!! and SAVE THE EARTH YALL


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